The Island in the North
by hbswan
Summary: A survivor describes how he and a small band of others outlasted the Zs at a former summer camp on a lake in rural Maine, in the northeastern U.S.
**The Island in the North**

 **[ Belgrade, Maine ]**

 **Before the war, this small rural community was a regional tourist destination, with summer cabins lining the shores of its four picturesque lakes. Today it is completely depopulated, the few survivors having long since moved south to the reemerging communities on the coast. Eric Beaulieu is tall and lean, and though he is not yet thirty, his face is weathered and his hair heavily streaked with grey. He carries a wood-handled splitting axe in a sling across his back. We drive to the end of a dirt road on the shore of the largest lake, Great Pond, which is glassy calm on this beautiful spring day. He instructs me to sit in the stern of a weatherworn but sturdy wooden dory, which he rows out into the lake with practiced skill and efficiency.**

We were resourceful, I guess, and we made some smart decisions, but so did a lot of people who didn't make it. Luck was the only reason we lived. I mean, I was taking it seriously before most people, but that was mostly because of where I was—small liberal arts college, pretty engaged with world affairs, lots of people on alternative news websites, and everybody talking to everybody else. We realized pretty early on that this wasn't just media hype, that something serious was going on, but for a long time it stayed theoretical for us; the main worry was how the governments of the world (including our own) might use the fear and the panic to tighten their grip on their people. A few days after the South African outbreak, I got a call from my dad. "I'm thinking maybe you should come home," he said. "Just in case." I told him to chill. At a certain point it became almost willful self-deception. College was such a bubble even in prewar times, but even in a broader sense, let's be honest: we were used to crises like these affecting people far away from us, and we didn't want to believe it could be otherwise.

But then the very next day, this guy I knew—I wouldn't say we were friends, but we ran in the same social circles—disappeared from campus. That wasn't so shocking—a few people I knew had already been called home by anxious parents—but this time it gave everyone a bad feeling. For one thing, he didn't tell anybody he was leaving; one morning his dorm room was empty and his car was gone. But more importantly, everyone knew: his dad was a U.S. Senator. He'd always been super low-key about it, but still, everyone was thinking it: his dad has access to information most of us don't, and he doesn't think it's safe here. I was already packing my stuff when my dad called. "I'm not suggesting it this time," he said. "Get the fuck back here, now." I'd heard him swear before, but never at me and never in that tone.

I said goodbye to whomever I could quickly find. We'd put on a brave face, agreeing that it was just parents being paranoid, but by that time we all knew there was a decent chance we'd never see each other again. I never got to say goodbye to a lot of people. I've been doing what I can to try and track them down, but I haven't managed to find a single one of them yet.

I drove straight back to Brunswick—where my family lived, about an hour south of here—stopping only for gas. It was bizarre, getting home at 2 AM and finding my mom, my dad, and my brother and sister in the living room, gathering all this stuff together. Blankets, batteries, outerwear, tools, food piled up in mountains all over the place—you never think about how much _stuff_ it would really take to uproot your whole life. Normally that would've scared the shit out of me, my family going off the paranoid deep end. And it did, I guess, but I also felt this vague sense of relief, that we weren't taking chances with this. And that scared me even more.

I knew the plan before they told me. It had been the first thing that popped into my head, too: move out to camp and wait this thing out, whatever it turns out to be.

 **[He gestures to the narrow, wooded island we are approaching.]**

We spent all night and the next day getting everything packed up and ready to go. It all seemed excessive at the time, but we agreed we had to plan for the worst-case scenario: that this is it, and we have to stay out there for years, maybe even indefinitely. And once you start thinking that way, the things you need just start multiplying. Clothes, tools, food, raw ingredients—we loaded up on all of it. We went to the pharmacy and filled up massive bags with medicines and nutritional supplements and that protein stuff that bodybuilders use. The whole time, my mom was on the internet, looking up any bit of useful info she could think of: how much of each nutrient you need to stay alive and halfway healthy, how long gasoline lasts, methods for hunting and fishing and how to clean the meat, how long different foods last before they spoil, which plants have which nutrients, and a thousand other little things. We wrote it all down, by hand in case the power went out, making this sort of ad hoc survival encyclopedia.

We made a run to the big L. L. Bean store in Freeport and got warm socks, long underwear, new knives and other tools. We got new gloves, face masks, snow goggles, and cross-country ski equipment. In the hunting and fishing section, we bought a bunch of the warmest jackets, pants, and boots they had. If this was the real deal, it was pretty much certain we were going to have to spend at least some of the winter out here. In Maine, inland, out on a wind-blasted island in the middle of a lake—it was going to be cold as fuck, and it's tough to find warmer clothing than hunting gear designed for sitting out in the frigid woods for hours on end. At the last minute—my brother had a stroke of genius—we grabbed the nicest compound hunting bow we could find, and a big quiver of arrows. Another little thing that ended up saving our lives. The place was mobbed, like at Christmas time, but still manageable, not quite the war zone it would become just a few days later. I remember that like everyone else there, Dad didn't even look at the insane price that came up on the screen.

We hit the road the next morning, as soon as we had everything packed up. My family plus our neighbors, my best friend Ben and his family: nine of us in total. It was only an hour drive, but it was tense; we clearly had a ton of stuff, and we weren't certain about the rule of law any more. But we made it, and managed to get ourselves and everything else out here.

 **[We arrive at our destination: Pine Island. It is less than a quarter mile long and never more than fifty yards wide, the center dominated by a steep ridge. Nevertheless, there are numerous wooden buildings of various sizes here – some in disrepair, others diligently maintained. There are abundant trees, but the island has been carefully landscaped to allow easy movement around it. Despite the many modifications that have clearly been made, it is still recognizable for what it once was: a summer camp.]**

It was a boys' camp before the war; Dad was the director. I'd spent most of every summer of my life out here—as a kid, as a camper, and the last few years as staff. It was still familiar, I still knew every inch of it like the back of my hand, but I was seeing it with new eyes then.

We realized quickly that it was actually a pretty great place to be if things went really bad. There was no electricity except a little for the kitchen fridges—that was part of the camp experience—so there was a well for water and a composting toilet system. Both of them were built to handle 140-plus people for six weeks each summer, so they could handle a small group year-round, no problem. All we had to do was shock the well periodically and rake the compost bins to help the decomposition along. The buildings were more of a problem; they were sturdy, but the place was only ever meant to be inhabited temporarily, in the summer, and it was already starting to get cold. The first several days we were working at a fever pitch, getting the buildings set up and taking stock of the tools we had to fight against a scourge that was still pretty vaguely defined. We were making runs into town nonstop, mostly to the lumber yard nearby, loading up with lumber, screws and nails, extra tools, even some welding gear, just in case. We'd picked out two cabins to live in, and we got as much insulation as we could, lined the walls and the ceiling and the floor with it, and covered it up with thick plywood, wrapped the outside in thick tent canvas. There were a couple of old woodstoves lying around; we moved those in too. As long as we had wood, it was enough to make things bearable through the winter.

We were picking up more food from the supermarket, too, and more medicine and supplements from the pharmacy. It looked insane, all piled up and organized, spilling out into the main area of the dining hall, but it never seemed like anywhere close to enough, once the idea took hold that you might have to stay out here for years. On the fourth day after we arrived, that started to seem more and more likely. We had a little hand-crank radio; that morning we listened to the Battle of Yonkers, and the first reports of the Panic. We made a few more trips to town for some last essential supplies, but even before the day was out, order was already breaking down.

Before we sealed ourselves off completely, we picked up a few more people, too. Our friends the Townshends, who lived at the head of the road, came out right after Yonkers: Dan and Melissa and two sons, both several years younger than me. And a couple of days later, the Bronsons showed up. They lived in Virginia, but they were an old camp family; Paul had gone there when he was a kid, and his son Jacob had for the past few summers. He said he'd been thinking about coming up here for a few weeks already, and they'd left as soon as Yonkers started unraveling. Him plus Annie and Jacob's little sister made a total of seventeen people.

 **When did you first encounter the living dead?**

Not for a little while longer. In the beginning we were mostly worried about other people. We couldn't hide our presence out there, what with the smoke from the stoves, and every now and then a boat would come by, maybe circle the island a few times. We were lucky that the worst of the Panic happened before the lake froze, so we at least had the protection of the water, and we could see anyone approaching from quite a ways off. One of our first big building projects was that observation post up on the roof of the main lodge.

 **[He points up to a skeletal wooden structure, reminiscent of a medieval outpost, affixed to the roof of the large building at the top of the ridge.]**

From up there, you could see at least a mile in every direction. We had some small .22 rifles that we'd used to teach the kids at camp, and Paul had a bigger hunting rifle, but we didn't have much ammo for either of them. It was enough to deter potential looters, though. A couple of times, we had to fire a warning shot across a boat's bow, but we never had any direct confrontations, thank god.

A few weeks after Yonkers, the first Zs started showing up. We knew we couldn't rely on the guns; we didn't have enough ammo, and we figured the noise would draw more Zs. Best to keep it in reserve, if we ever encountered other people. But it turned out this place also had quite a bit in the way of potential weapons. We did most of our own basic maintenance, so there were a lot of tools around.

 **[He leads me into one of the insulated buildings — formerly the camp infirmary, according to the sign above the door. The walls of the front room are lined with improvised weapons. Eric picks up one of the most numerous ones: a basic wood-handled axe, identical to the one he carries.]**

At camp, we'd give out gifts to the campers and staff for each year they'd come to camp. So at the end of your second summer, you got a felt pennant with the camp logo, third year you got a sew-on patch, that sort of thing. Well, for the sixth year, you got one of these. They weren't just tokens; they're real, high-quality tools, made for splitting a lot of wood. And we had about fifteen new ones lying around, extras for next year, plus all the others for doing work around here. Nice and simple, no moving parts, and it was pretty easy maintenance to keep the heads on securely and the blades sharp. There were a few crowbars around, too—these long ones worked best. We had several of these sledgehammers—too heavy to be constantly swinging, especially on our bare-bones diet, but if a zombie was on the ground, you could drop it down on the skull, hammer-of-Thor-style, let gravity do most of the work. We'd gotten a bunch of aluminum baseball bats on one of our town runs, and soon we were forming little squadrons, a few bats to take them out of the knees and one person on the sledge, cracking skulls. We'd take out small groups that way, to preserve the sharpness of the other weapons.

The problem was: all of those required you to be pretty close to the Zs before you could take them out, and we knew we were going to be facing big hoards in the spring. But we got lucky again. In a bucket way up on the top shelf of the maintenance shed, we found about fifteen massive 12-inch nails. No idea how they got there—probably left over from some forgotten project 20 years before. You were always coming across mysterious old shit like that at camp; it was the kind of thing we would've laughed about before the war. But my brother, with his engineering mind, had a great idea. We had a bunch of wooden oars in the boat house—long and super sturdy; we'd had them as long as I'd been alive. We cut off the blade, drill a wide hole a few inches down into the shaft, and stick the nail in. We'd fill in the gap with wood wedges, drown it in Gorilla glue and rubber cement, wrap it in a couple yards of duct tape, and weld some heavy sheet metal around the whole area.

 **[He takes one off the wall and hefts it fondly – a weathered but solid wooden shaft about 5 feet long, with a rough cone of metal at the top and a large nail protruding about six inches.]**

Mean-looking bastards, aren't they? Go in through the eye, angled slightly upwards, and the Zs would drop, with way less energy than swinging an axe.

 **But how did you manage to fight off large hoards in such a confined area?**

Well, mostly by being lucky. This place turned out to be pretty safe for reasons that we never could've anticipated beforehand, just simple facts of geography. Maine is pretty rural, and zombies generally tend to be drawn to more densely populated areas. So there was more to draw them south down the Eastern seaboard, and even when they did come this way, most of them went where the population was denser. Not too far north of here, it starts to get pretty remote, so they either passed to the south of us, going up the coast towards Nova Scotia, or just to the west of us, towards Montreal and Quebec City. Don't get me wrong: it's not like they left us alone, but we didn't get any of those huge, city-sized hoards that chewed up most of New England.

And I think we were even spared a lot of the ones that did come through here. The lake didn't stop the Zs, but it seemed to lessen their ability to sense us, and to communicate with each other. On calm days, sound still carried across the lake, but any noise above the surface didn't seem to alert the underwater Zs nearby, the way it would on land. So we just got the ones that sensed us from the woods on the mainland or happened to hit the island on their way across the lake. We had plenty to deal with, but I think at least as many more probably passed right through the lake at other points and never even knew we were here.

The timing was lucky, too; we got enough contact for the initial shock and terror to wear off, and then the first winter hit, and we got some time to think rationally about it, how to work with the space and the tools we had.

And it turns out this island is actually pretty well disposed to defense. You can see most of the terrain is pretty steep and rugged; there are only a few areas where it runs gently down to the water. Everywhere else, erosion by the waves and winter ice had left a natural drop-off along the shoreline. In those first limited encounters, we noticed how valuable that could be. On the west side of the island, where the water stays shallow for a long ways out, we could see the Zs coming from like 50 yards away, and the lake bottom there is all river stones, rounded by erosion and covered in thin layers of algae. It's tough to walk on even when you're stepping carefully, and Zs don't tread softly. They'd slip and fall constantly—it was almost comical sometimes. You could sit there watching one for 20 minutes before it finally reached the shore, then hit it easily with an axe or a sledgehammer as it struggled up the slope. In the places where the embankment was steepest, pretty much just a vertical wall of earth and logs, they couldn't get up it at all.

We realized we needed to make the whole shoreline like that: vertical, slightly higher than human height. It seemed impossible at first, but that first winter it was our highest priority, and with all of us going at it every day, it was amazing how quick we could work. The frozen ground was like dry concrete, but we kept hacking at it with pickaxes to make it vertical, piling everything on top to make it higher. We still had gas then, and we knew it wouldn't keep much longer, so we went full-stop with the chainsaw, cut down trees, used the branches for firewood, and used the logs to reinforce the shore walls against erosion.

 **[He leads me along the shoreline, which has indeed been shaped into a six-foot vertical wall along its entire length. The original height of the ground is still vaguely discernible beneath the wall of logs, earth, and rocks used to raise the level at lower points. At the one tiny stretch of beach, a barrier has been constructed out of sections of dismantled docks.]**

We knew it wouldn't hold off a big hoard for long; once several bodies piled up at the base, the others would be able to reach us. But we did have a pretty long stretch of wall to work with, and we realized anyway that keeping them off the island was ultimately less important than controlling how they moved and where they came ashore. At the southern end, where the island starts to get real narrow and rugged, we left the shore as it was: unfortified but still steep enough that they'd struggle to get up it.

It took some trial and error, but by the time the winter came, we had the beginnings of a system for fighting them on land. It was sort of like a miniature phalanx: usually six or eight of those oar-spears with pairs rotating, covering the previous group while they reset, and so on, leapfrogging slowly backwards—plus a few axes to cover the sides. So we were always retreating, but killing Zs every step of the way. The narrow paths became kind of an advantage then, kept them in a bottleneck. Taking the longest routes down the island, we could take out a surprising number as we went.

But we knew we needed some haven we could retreat to when we inevitably ran out of fighting space. And it turned out we had a perfect one. The camp had a launch—basically a lobster boat without a cabin—that we used to transport stuff to the island and back. There was no gas left, but just out of sentimental instinct we'd saved it from the ice, rigged up this ridiculous block and tackle with like 10 switchbacks and pulled it up onto the beach.

That became our fallback. We kept it moored in the cove at the northern end of the island, where we used to keep all the sailboats and dories. We kept a few dories tied up at other points around the shore, in case we couldn't reach the cove, but a small, tippy boat in shallow water—it's not where you want to be. The water's only about neck deep in the cove, but the big boat has high gunwales, and it's heavy as fuck—no way even a crowd of Zs could flip it. The only cause for concern was if the bodies started piling up on the bottom around us, but even that wasn't much of a problem; if it was windy, the waves would carry the bodies away before they settled, and if it wasn't, we had the boat on an adjustable mooring line, so we could move it all around the cove without drifting away. I remember whole days and nights spent out there, standing at the gunwale with a spear, looking and listening in the dark for the little currents and ripples when a head broke the surface.

 **What if you couldn't reach the boat?**

It happened every now and then, if our route got fucked up or something. We had a second fallback, though: the rec hall up at the top of the ridge. It's a big building on uneven ground, so in most places it was elevated at least 5 or 6 feet. There was one corner where the windows were only a few feet off the ground; as soon as the ground thawed, we dug a massive ditch in front of them, so the Zs couldn't get in. We demoed the two sets of stairs, put retractable ladders in their place, and that was it. Stabbing and swinging from the windows and the porch, we could hold out for a long time up there, too. It was way more nerve-wracking, though; there was more danger of bodies piling up, but if we could get them around to the west side, where the porch is at its highest and the ground dropped of steeply, we could often get them to tumble all the way down the slope.

And that was our system, pretty much. Start by taking them out along the shore, and when they start to pile up, move down to a fresh patch and repeat. Lead them down to the northern end of the island first, so we have the maximum amount of shoreline to work with. If they reach the southern end, start the phalanx retreat, taking the longest route if possible. If we get as far as the cove, break for the boat, leaving enough time to get everyone on board and cast off. Then stay out until they stop coming, there or up in the rec hall if things got fucked up somehow. It wasn't perfect, but it was the best we could think of, given what we had to work with. We had it worked out by the end of the first full summer, and it didn't change much for the rest of the war. We got really good at it—could do it in our sleep before too long.

 **What about the bodies? You couldn't just leave them there.**

They were an issue, for sure. We couldn't bury them—the ground's too hard and rocky, and there was no room to do it anyway—and we couldn't leave the piles along the shore or our defense would fall apart. We didn't go out of our way to get bodies out of the water—it was too dangerous, and the waves would eventually carry them off—but we got the ones we could reach from the shore and laid them out with the others. The only option was to burn them. There was already a big fire pit down by the cove, where we used to have campfire performances every night, and we set up several others, wherever there was space. We didn't want them going all the time—the smell might attract more Zs—so we'd wait until all of them were full, so to speak, and then set them all at once, on a calm day so the smoke wouldn't carry too far.

Those were weird days, man, I'll tell you. Five massive infernos going all day and night, the putrid smoke and everyone bundled up in gas masks—it was hard to believe it was the same place I'd come to ever summer before. But it unavoidably _was_ the same place, though, and in a way that was the hardest thing: what it did to your memories and your sense of place. I'll never forget the first time I killed a Z, right out in front of the porch we used to sign the kids up for their daily activities. We hacked up the shoreline, cut down trees for firewood, ripped up all the tent platforms, the docks, and even some of the buildings for lumber and kindling. There was all this horror in our day-to-day existence, and yet the weather was still warm and sunny, the lake and the wooded hills were still gorgeous and peaceful, you'd still hear the wind in the trees and the water lapping on the rocks, just like in the old days. The contrast was too much sometimes, like it was destroying a part of me.

 **[He shudders.]**

Summers were rough, man. I preferred the winters.

 **[He catches my skeptical look.]**

No, honestly. We all did. They were hard, don't get me wrong: there was a lot of work to do, it was cold as shit, and it only got colder as the war went on. But to get a break from the Zs, to be able to put all that tension and horror on the back burner for a while—it kept us sane.

After a week of sub-freezing temperatures, we could safely assume the Zs were frozen. It would be a few weeks more before the ice was thick enough to walk on, and we'd spend that time unwinding from the stress and exhaustion of the summer. 'Hibernation Time,' we called it—just stay in the cabin, catch up on sleep, give our bodies a break.

Once the ice was thick enough, things got busy again. There was always engineering work to do: maintaining the defenses and the buildings, gathering firewood, getting the weapons tuned up for the summer, keeping the well from freezing. It was rough, doing all that in the dead of winter, but as long as the sun was out and the wind wasn't too strong, we could manage. We had the outerwear for it, plus long underwear, wool socks, and good gloves. We maintained them well and they held together. As long as we had a reasonably warm cabin to go back to, we could deal with the cold.

The main project was gathering food; we had to find enough to supplement our base supply for the whole summer. We had the bow and arrow, so most days, a pair of us would be hunting out in the woods along the shore. We shot anything we could: squirrels, rabbits, wild turkeys, muskrats, deer if we were lucky. A couple of times we even got a moose. In the early days, we'd looked up how to clean and preserve meat, and we converted the little swimming supply shack into a smokehouse, so we could make it into jerky that wouldn't go bad.

We found a couple of ice fishing shacks at the houses along the shore, and we set those up too. Every now and then, we'd get a bass or maybe a pike, anything to add to the food supply.

Winter was the only time we could leave the island, so we'd also take short excursions, 3 or 4 of us on cross-country skis, scavenging the surrounding area for food and tools and anything else we could use. We'd be out for a few days at a time, do a loop of a dozen miles or so and check every building we came across. We found a lot of useful stuff, but I could never completely ignore the fact that we were also stripping the whole area bare, you know? Like someone else, even more desperate than us, might be devastated someday to find nothing there.

There was another purpose to the excursions, too: taking out as many Zs as we could while they were frozen. We stuck to the roads, but it seemed like that's where most of the Zs were anyway. Maybe it was the obstacles, or all the competing shapes and sounds scrambling their senses—I don't know, but we never found too many on our hunting outings. If the temperature had dropped quickly, they'd even still be upright. Either way, a few good slugs from an axe or a sledgehammer were enough. If they'd been frozen for a good while, they'd shatter like brittle rock. Each winter, we'd shoot to sweep a 5-mile radius all around the lake, and sometimes we could do even more. We figured it might prevent them from happening upon the island when spring rolled around. I don't know how much it actually helped, but it just felt good, smashing them with no stress. It can't have hurt; at the very least, each one was one less Z for somebody else to fight. It was weird as hell, though—these things that were ripping our whole planet apart, and now they were just another chore; all we had to do was whale on them a few times, like teenagers vandalizing a street sign. I could never quite shake the feeling that they might wake up at any moment.

 **Wasn't that possible, if the temperature rose enough?**

Sure, and it happened plenty of times. Winters here are long, but even when the climate cooled there would always be a few thaws each year. We kept a close eye on the temperature, and if it stayed above freezing for a few days, we'd light a big fire with a lot of smoke and start making a ton of noise.

 **But wouldn't that draw them towards you?**

Of course, that was the point! The ice was the perfect place to fight them. They'd be sluggish, for one thing: unfrozen but just barely—we could outrun them at a walking pace. That phalanx method with the spears and the axes, it was never meant to hold a position; its only limitation on the island was the limited space for retreat. Out on the ice, we had all the space we needed; we could lead them around for as long as it took.

 **Wouldn't the thaw affect the ice as well?**

No way. It was well below freezing most of the time, plus you've got snow falling and getting compacted, rained on and refrozen. Several layers of that, plus the ice expanding underneath—by January you had at least 2 feet of ice, often 3. A few days above freezing isn't going to put a dent in that.

And there was another benefit: even if the Zs refroze before they got to us, as long as they came closer there would be fresh ones to kill on our sweeps through the area.

And when they did reach us, we could be pretty certain we wouldn't have to fight much past sundown. It's a rare thaw that stays above freezing at night, and with the Zs just barely mobile, they'd freeze back up pretty quickly.

It led to some crazy sights. There was one night, man, sometime in the later years. It had been hovering at 34 degrees for 2 days. Perfect conditions: still cold enough that the Zs were slower than a drunk tortoise. We watched several big groups massing way down the lake, eventually coalescing into 2 massive hoards—there had to have been a couple thousand total. They moved real slowly, like a shadow's progress over the ground, and they were coming towards us, but they were still a half-mile out when night fell and the temperature suddenly dropped like 25 degrees, fast. They all froze standing, some of them mid-stride, with their arms still outstretched, like somebody had just hit pause on a cosmic remote control.

You know that ancient tomb in China, the one with all those statues of soldiers guarding it? It reminded me of that; it almost seemed like they were frozen in ranks. We were out there for hours, working our way along the lines, breaking heads. It was a gorgeous night: full moon, bright as daylight, not a cloud in the sky and barely a breath of wind. And before we knew it, this sort of wacked-out party vibe set in; we were whooping and laughing, high-fiving and shouting out ridiculous war cries and lines from movies, doing trick swings and howling at the night sky like wolves. We'd take breaks for water, or just to rest our arms, and flop down on the ice, look out across the lake at the snow-covered hills, and it was like: no worries, just pure joy and exhilaration. We trekked around the lake all night, found a few smaller groups and knocked them off, too, and there was this unanimous feeling, no one even had to say it: this is a good night, this is the most fun we've had in a while.

 **[He smiles and shakes his head at the memory.]**

You know, it's funny, the way it all exists in my mind now, those are the kind of things I remember: not the whole routine of horror and killing, but the absurd, mind-bending weirdness of it all. That's what I think about the most: smashing skulls out on the ice under a full moon; or the roads just unplowed corridors of fresh snow, meandering through the trees; or watching the vehicles we'd fled here in decay with each passing year, turning into rusted husks; or sitting up in the outpost in a howling wind, looking out at the hills and the roiling clouds and the lake churning with whitecaps, feeling like some sentry in a fort out of I don't even know what insane period of ancient history. Once on an excursion, I saw couple of horses sprinting down the commercial strip outside of Waterville and a huge pack of coyotes chasing them, kicking up a massive fountain of snow. I saw part of a house collapse—just happened to be passing by when one of the walls buckled and took half the structure down with it, a shattering of noise like a thunderclap, and within a minute everything was settled and still again, back to normal.

The first summer, a flock of at least 60 loons showed up, dozens more than I'd ever seen in one place, and one day we saw them all together off the north tip of the island, flapping around, diving, spearing at the water, hooting and screaming with that spooky noise they make, just going apeshit at what must've been some Zs just below the surface. A few days later, they were gone, and we never saw another loon on the lake again.

Another time, a hoard showed up during a nor'easter, one of those late-fall storms that we get up here. They drove us down to the cove and we were out there all day and night, dressed in unwieldy foul-weather gear, rain coming down horizontal sheets, huge waves pitching the boat all over the place, and every now and then an undead face appearing out of the maelstrom for you to hack at—it was like Moby Dick on bad acid or something.

And that was pretty much our life, year after year. Fight all summer, sleep while the lake freezes, make a full-time job out of gathering food and keeping warm and knocking off Zs in the winter. It worked, but it was never easy; for all the efficiency we gained through experience, we got weaker as our Spartan diet took its toll. But I guess we did something right, because we made it through.

 **[He casts his eyes down.]**

Of course, not all of us did. A few years in, Ben's parents both got some old-fashioned fever, and died within a month of each other. We lost Mrs. Bronson to the Zs early on, and one of the Townshend boys a few years later. And my Dad in the sixth year; he didn't know what he'd gotten, but he could sense what was coming, quarantined himself and was dead within a few months. It was brutal, but there was nothing we could do. He died in a fever-dream version of the place he'd devoted his whole life to. I took it hard for a long time, until the spring came and I couldn't afford to grieve any more. But it still eats at me, that it happened with the end in sight.

 **How did you know that?**

We had the radio tuned to Radio Free Earth, so we heard when the Army set out, and got updates on their progress every day. We were one of the last places they were going to reach, and once we got a sense of how slow they were going, we realized we were going to need to survive at least another year, maybe a few.

It was rough—the hardest period of the war for sure. Our non-perishables were getting thin, we were running out of bleach to treat the well, and our tools and weapons were wearing out. We were all skin and bones after so long without getting enough calories, our bodies getting slowly hollowed out by the need for energy, existing in that perpetually exhausted state that hunger brings on. We were miserable, constantly freezing with no fat to hold the heat in, and all sick of each other after years of speaking to no one else. The waiting game was driving us crazy, listening each day for the incremental step they'd taken towards us.

One spring and summer came and went, then another. It was a brutal winter, blizzards popping up out of nowhere; Paul Bronson and my brother and sister nearly died when they got caught in one out on an excursion. It seemed like every day we finished off some type of food.

But the Army, though they still seemed to be moving just inches each day, was getting close, and it was easy to forget that in the larger scheme of things, they were almost here. They were in Vermont, they were in Hanover, they were in the White Mountains. And suddenly something changed, and we realized they'd actually be here soon, maybe before the winter was out. We started eating a little more each day, stopped going out searching, just kept the fire going and waited. Every few days: they were in Gorham, they were in Bethel and setting up the siege of Portland, they were in Dixfield, they were in Farmington and Skowhegan. We started hearing faint echoes of atypical noises in the distance. We started seeing smoke on the horizon in the late afternoon.

Then one morning, my brother and I were chopping wood when we heard a shout from Jacob, who was keeping watch. We all sprinted up to the porch, and there they were, a long line of people in dark blue, stretched all the way across the ice, walking slowly and deliberately towards us from the west. It was a frigid day, overcast and no wind; we could hear them chatting when they were still a mile out. That was wild enough on its own: just hearing other human voices after so long. We went out onto the ice to greet them, suited up as if for battle, like it was somehow important for them to see how we'd handled ourselves in the thick of it.

That was the most bizarre moment of them all: to have been in this desperate mode of living, fighting for life while you slowly starve to death, never knowing if you'll still be alive a few months or even a few days from now. And then to see the end of it all, the return to normal life or whatever was left of it, walking towards us in real time, in a tangible form: figures you could see and footsteps you could hear...

We'd been so deep into the business of day-to-day survival, we'd barely had time to think about anything else, certainly not about what might happen if we ever made it through alive. I wasn't the only one who was a little bit nervous.

Paul stepped forward to greet them. They stopped about five feet away and waited while one of them came hurrying towards us from a place farther down the line. A big, broad-shouldered Latino guy, introduced himself as Captain Torres.

They shook hands, and he went down the line, greeted all of us. He looked up at the island rising up behind us, and said: "Quite a place you've got here."

Paul replied: "Yes, sir,"

"Been here the whole war?"

"Yes, sir."

The other soldiers were right behind him, still in line, looking with interest at us and at the island. One of them let out a low whistle and murmured, "God damn."

Captain Torres asked: "Is anyone in urgent need of medical attention?"

"No, sir; we're just hungry."

And that was that. They gave us some Army rations to eat and told us to pack up whatever we wanted to bring, that they'd help carry it. We left with them that afternoon, and walked several miles to the lumber yard, where they turned us over to the support units. It's impossible to describe: the end of everything we'd known for years, the beginning of the most incredible, numbing relief, and the nervousness about what would happen next—all at the same time, all contained in the simple act of just walking across the ice.

 **[He looks out across the lake, leaning against a tree.]**

I guess there's not much else to tell. We went east with the Army as far as the coast, waited for a month or so in Rockland while the other units completed their big sweep of the north woods. As spring approached, we started south, and I knew even before we reached home that I didn't want to stop there just yet. I had my strength back, had real _energy_ for the first time in years, and still had almost a decade of pent-up urge to move. Ben and my brother felt the same; we went to the battalion commander and asked what we could do. We didn't have the training for the combat units, but in the Army there's always work to be done. They put us on support, working on the supply lines and the cleanup. It was boring work, paper pushing and hauling shit—exactly the sort of job I would've hated before the war, but it was perfect for those several months. I had food and shelter, my mind was occupied, I got to be part of a larger human community again and do my part to help, however small it was.

We helped clear debris from the streets at the siege of Boston, hauled supplies on foot during that gnarly slog through the Connecticut salt marshes in the driving spring rain, and did body disposal during the final push to clear the Hero City. It blew my mind, all of it—remember: all I'd seen of the war beforehand was what had happened out on the island. What shocked me most was the _scale_ of it all: whole blocks of smashed storefronts and ruined pavement, the mass of bodies pouring off a skyscraper like a dark waterfall when they cleared it with the Lemming maneuver, the gaping holes in the streets and the new plant life starting to push up through every crack. And the stuff: cars, bodies, abandoned belongings, pieces of ruined buildings—all piled up and strewn everywhere, like the city had been sliced open and its guts spilled out into the street.

It was a weird feeling when victory was declared—it certainly didn't look like we'd won anything, but there was this slow, subtle lifting of tension as it began to sink in: that we'd cleared the entire country of Zs. It gave me some sense of finality, and I realized I was ready to go home. It wasn't hard to leave; they were trying to streamline the Army in preparation for the more limited campaigns assisting other countries. Ben, my brother and I started the long, complicated trek north, got home just as the winter was setting in. And there's been plenty to keep me occupied ever since, making the Mid-Coast region livable again. A hundred things to do at once, but at least fighting off the Zs isn't one of them anymore.

 **[He looks down at his feet and kicks at the dirt.]**

You know, it's funny: what with all that work back home and transportation not being what it was, this is the first time I've been back here.

 **[He looks around at the fortified shoreline and the weatherworn buildings.]**

I thought it would be hard, coming back—that it would dredge up all the misery and terror we went through here. And the weird thing is, it _does_ bring it back, but it's not so bad, because all of that is inseparable from the fact that we survived it. This is where it all went down, but none of it could touch me in the end. Like the island saw us through, you know? How can you feel anything but good and whole in a place like that?

 **[He raps his knuckles affectionately on the tree trunk.]**

This place is in my bones. It was even before the war, but it's different now, because it's where I faced death, and it's the reason I made it through.

I don't think we think about that enough: the way a place you know and love defines you. I guess that's what I mean about luck: so little of my survival had anything to do with any choice I made. This turned out to be a good place to weather the storm, but we didn't know that when we fled here—we came because of all the places we knew, this was where we felt we had the best shot. It's a happy accident of geology that this island's even here, and a happy accident of history that I grew up with it and knew it like the back of my hand. That's all that separates me from all those others who didn't make it—not skill or smarts, just this place.

The island that saved me.

 _Author's Note: I noticed how most of the characters in the original book, out of structural necessity, narrate only a specific part of the overall story, and I thought it might be interesting to follow one survivor over the entire course of the war. Also, in case anyone was wondering, the setting described in the story is a real place; there is a boys' summer camp on Pine Island, on Great Pond in Belgrade, Maine, and my Dad is the director. I've often speculated, with friends and on my own, how I might survive a zombie apocalypse like the one described in World War Z. This is basically my thought experiment on that subject. And of course, I'd love to hear any feedback how successful it was. Thanks for reading :)_


End file.
